INDEX 365 CHAPTER I CANADA BEFORE FRONTENAC 1608 TO 1632 When Count Frontenac landed at Quebec, in the month of September 1672, to administer the government of Canada or, as it was then more generally called, New France, the country had been for a period of a little over sixty years under continuous French rule. The period may, indeed, be limited to exactly sixty years if we take as the starting-point the commission issued to Samuel de Champlain on the 15th of October 1612 as "Commander in New France," under the authority of the Count de Soissons, who had been appointed by the queen regent, Marie de Medicis, as lieutenant-general of that territory. What had been accomplished during those sixty odd years? How had the country developed, and what were the elements of the situation which confronted Frontenac on his arrival? Answers to these questions may be gathered, it is hoped, from the following brief introductory narrative. The territorial claims of France in the gulf and valley of the St. Lawrence were founded on the discoveries made in the name of the French king, Francis I, by that brave Breton mariner, Jacques Cartier, in the celebrated voyages undertaken by him in the years 1534 and 1535. An attempt at colonization made in the latter year, the site chosen being the left bank of the St. Charles near Quebec, failed miserably; nor were the similar attempts made in 1541 by Cartier and in 1542 by Roberval any more successful. Cartier did not again return to Canada, and all efforts in the direction of colonization were suspended for sixty years, though French fishermen continued to visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the year 1603 a notable figure appears upon the scene, Samuel Champlain, the true founder of French power on the continent of America. A few years previously a certain naval captain named Chauvin, who enjoyed considerable influence at court, had applied for and obtained from King Henry IV a patent granting him exclusive trading privileges in the St. Lawrence. This he had done at the instance of one Pontgrave, a leading merchant of St. Malo, well acquainted with the St Lawrence trade, whose business instinct had led him to see that the fur trade alone of that region might be a source of vast wealth to any single company controlling it. One condition of the grant was that not less than five hundred persons should be settled in the country, and another that provision should be made for the religious instruction both of the settlers and of the natives. Having obtained the patent, neither Chauvin nor Pontgrave, whom he appointed as his lieutenant, seems to have thought of anything but the conversion of their privilege into money. They sailed to the St. Lawrence, but proceeded no further than Tadousac, where they set up a trading establishment. At the end of the first summer season they returned to France, leaving some sixteen men